Pat Dalton Amico, local musician and Oct. 1 shooting survivor, spends some time reflecting in the community healing garden in downtown Las Vegas, Monday Sept. 26, 2022.
Thursday, Sept. 29, 2022 | 2 a.m.
Patrick Amico has woken up with a heavy heart the past five years.
He and his wife, Colli, go about their routine — making breakfast, getting dressed and later playing a show with Amico’s band, the Pat Dalton Gang — always trying to block out the horrific memories of people lying on the ground with gunshot wounds or the screams of frightened concertgoers on Oct. 1, 2017, at the Route 91 Harvest Festival.
It’s not post-traumatic stress disorder, Amico believes, but it’s something that all survivors of the mass shooting in Las Vegas have to live with: the memories, and maybe some guilt.
The five-year remembrance of the shooting that immediately killed 58 and injured more than 800 is Saturday. Almost daily, Amico says he lives with “survivor’s remorse.”
He still wakes up and tells his wife, “I could’ve done more, I should’ve done more,” even despite driving more than 10 attendees of the country music festival away from the gunfire raining down from the 32nd floor of a nearby resort.
“I just wanted to help,” Amico said. “You did what you could do, but you go home thinking of what you saw.”
For Amico, known locally as country singer-songwriter Pat Dalton Amico, the healing process will never end, but his music “has really helped.”
Amico and his wife were on the west side of the stage when Jason Aldean began his set that night for a show with 22,000 attendees. They decided to move across the crowd closer to Amico’s truck, which was parked in the festival’s VIP section on the other side of the stage, and they were deep in the crowd when the first round of bullets rained down on them.
After escaping into the parking lot, Amico spent minutes loading fellow attendees — even one with a bullet wound — into his truck to drive them away from the festival grounds.
It was this life-altering day that became inspiration for his song “58 Angels,” a tribute to the 58 lives lost during the Route 91 shooting. It’s a song that has been a large part of Amico’s healing, as it has become sort of a local anthem for those connected to the shooting.
Although he initially had no intention of writing a song about the tragedy, Amico was inspired by his cousin, another local lyricist, who wrote Amico a song with the line “58 candles, 58 flames.”
The line was “very inspirational” to Amico, enough that he was able to write “58 Angels” in just three hours after receiving it five days after the shooting.
In the past five years, the song has been played for various Oct. 1 remembrance events and for families of the shooting victims during memorials, but never anywhere else.
Amico says he “only (plays) the songs for Route 91 during Route 91 (remembrances)” because of the connection it has to Las Vegas, specifically. For Amico, he “could never say no” to the families.
Through this song, Amico has become close to the families of each victim, and they have all been able to cope together, he said. “Supporting each other is just so important” to Amico and other Route 91 survivors, especially those who put their trust in Amico and climbed into the back of his truck bed the night of the deadliest mass shooting in modern American history.
Over the past five years, Amico has reconnected with all of the people he assisted that night. He said they have come to his home, met his wife and had dinner with the two of them. It’s a bond that Amico said could only be created by those who understand the shared pain of experiencing a mass shooting.
“It’s amazing what music can do,” Amico said. “It’s brought us together.”
Despite being “lucky” enough to not be diagnosed with PTSD, Amico still gets emotional when he plays “58 Angels.” Family members of the victims and Route 91 survivors will hold his hand in support while he sings, a gesture that Amico said had brought him to tears.
The song “brings that moment (during the shooting) right back,” Amico said.
Amico doesn’t plan on ending his music career — and his healing journey — any time soon. Clark County officials have asked him to perform at next year’s Sunrise Service, a first for him at that particular event, and he will continue to sing for the 58 families he has come to know so well, he said.
He may never be able to shake the “survivor’s remorse” he feels each day, but each strum of his guitar might help ease the pain.
“There’s no winning. There’s no super gratification that you survived and someone didn’t,” Amico said. “That’s why the healing is so important.”
